Nirmal Chakraborty all set for his directorial debut

Nirmal Charkraborty, a close associate of actress Rituparna Sengupta, is all set for his directorial debut with

Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay

’s Datta. The shoot will start in

Bolpur

from next week with Rituparna Sengupta, Joy Sengupta, Ferdous Ahmed and Biswajit Chakraborty, among others.

The director said that apart from being a freelance film journalist, he wanted to be a filmmaker for the last 20 years. Around two years ago, he finally decided to make a film. Initially, he started working on a storyline written by him and was planning to have it scripted by a good scriptwriter, but later changed his mind. “I thought of working on some existing story in

Bengali literature

. After much research, I finalised on Datta. I chose Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay over Tagore and Bankim Chottopadhyay because I found his narration simpler,” he said. Besides, Nirmal thinks that the present generation doesn’t read as much and making this film will help them get a glimpse of Bengali literature. “This is another reason why I was keen on making this film,” he added.

Datta is a romantic story, influenced by the Victorian notion of 'romantic love'. It dwells on the growing attachment between an affluent Brahmo woman and an indigent but brilliant Hindu young man despite all odds. “I am keeping the social backdrop and the characters the way they are in the book, but some dialogues have been changed,” said Nirmal, adding that he is extremely tense about his first film.